Why ask Why?

The evening is field with fragrance of wild flowers.
In the old temple young monks sit in quiet meditation.
The master walks among them with silent steps.
A tense face stands out from the serene smiles.
A sweat bead rolls off from the student’s forehead.

The master taps his shoulder and speaks softly into his ear.
- My son, are you sure you know what you are doing?
- Yes master, I am quite sure of what I am doing
Whispers the student.
- But I am not quite sure of, why I am doing it.

Why are we doing it?
We only ask that question in the moments of crisis.
Other than that, we pretty much think we have it figure it out.
So we just forge ahead doing it
We want to be rich, famous, enlightened, spiritual, wise or influential.
So we keep doing it until the moment we get stuck.
Then we stop to ask the question

Why do we want to be rich?
The usual answer is so we can buy things.
Nobody wants to be rich just to have piles and piles of money.
Which really means nobody really wants to be rich just to be rich.
We want something else.

Why are we practicing Buddhism?
Why do we want to be enlightened?
Then we see that just “doing it” is not what we want.
We want something else.
But we never figured out the “why” part of it

It is like this bloody war going on.
We thought we knew why we were doing it.
So we started it.
Then we got into a crisis and started asking; “why are we doing it?”
We are stuck doing it and the only reason we are doing it is because we are doing it and stopping doing it we believe it would be a worse alternative.

So we keep on doing whatever we are doing.
And after a while we get quite good at doing it.
So we become experts on how to do things and we pass that knowledge on.
With each generation we do it better and better.
But we are not quite sure anymore of why we are doing it.